QUICK SHOTS: Quarry #2: The Broker's Wife by Max Allan Collins

I've long been a fan of Max Allan Collins work. A couple of his novelizations were some of the first "grown-up" books I read when I made the switch from Hardy Boys and Sherlock Holmes to the harder stuff. I read quite a few Nathan Heller's in my teenage years and read through some of his comic book work but Nolan and especially Quarry eluded me for a long time. First off, I think I just never ran into them at the used books stores I used to haunt. I picked them up when I saw them, but they were all out of order. And I knew I'd like them, so I wanted to read them through the right way. 

When I did get my hands on the first Quarry, I read it quick and guess what? I liked it a lot then the series sorta became one of the ones that I decided to "savor" waiting for the right time when I needed a sure-fire treat. Since I'm still getting over the reading slump I was in that I talked about in the last review I wanted some sure-fire hits. And I don't think I'll be waiting too long to tackle any more of them.

The Broker's Wife has Quarry, a mid-western hitman who is in quasi-hiding after being around when his boss, The Broker got dead. He's mostly just bored, so when two hired killers come and try to take him out, he's relived to be back in the fray. Along the way he tackles with more killers, shady lawyers and, obviously, the titular Broker's Wife. This is a clean book man; everything works and isn't showy about it. Max's style is sparse and wryly funny. The twists are laid out before and waiting for you to remember about when he lets you in on the REST of the story. Never fails to make you smile. 

Quarry himself is a lot fun too. He's a tough guy, sure, a 'Nam vet who has no qualms about murdering people for money, but it doesn't mean he doesn't have a sense of humor. The humor element is a little stronger here and I think it grows a little more as the series goes on. All-in-all, you just sorta like Quarry, he seems like a good guy to have a soda pop with, as long as you don't cross him.

So, The Broker's Wife (also published as Quarry's List) is a fun time, halfway through I paused my reading and watched The Last Lullaby, a feature film based on the Quarry short story A Matter of Principle. The movie was written by Max and stars Tom Sizemore as Price (Quarry) who does a pretty good job, his Quarry isn't quite as relatable/funny but its solid casting. The movie is an indie joint so adjust your expectations. It's a sturdy adaptation with some flair and really nice acting by Tom and Sasha Alexander. It also seems to take a little from the ending of The Broker's Wife, so I could sorta see where this book was going after a bit. Didn't affect the enjoyment any though. 

So, this one's got like the easiest and highest recommendation. All the Quarry books are easy to get too with Hard Case Crime republishing and publishing the new adventures of Quarry, which isn't always the norm in the books I review here. So, you got no excuse not to pick one or all of them up. 

And my now traditional sign-off, my first novel Gunpowder Breath is available on Amazon as an eBook!

My buddy Mike Hammer and "Complex 90" by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins

There a far too few writers like Mickey Spillane around, in fact there was only ever one writer (not author) like Mickey. He was a true American original who enthralled countless readers since his days writing them funny books (i.e. comics) but with the creation of Mike Hammer, Mickey found himself a winner and when I found both Mickey and Mike I found a life-long companion. Back when I was getting into private eye fiction and surfing the web for any recommendations I didn't know how to feel about Mickey. Too many folks looked down on him, some did it blatantly, some hid behind a bit of sarcasm or humor and then some folks flat-out loved him. There didn't seem to be a middle ground, which seems to fit the world of Mike Hammer and Mickey Spillane since they are men of extremes.

So, like I'm one to do I bought any Mickey Spillane I could find but held off reading him. Would Mike Hammer be too tough? Well, yeah he's the toughest S.O.B. Noir-Superman ever put on the page read "One Lonely Night" and see what I mean. Would the much degraded prose of Spillane be too much for me to take? Pssh. Other then my personal preference for short chapters, Mickey is one of the most compulsively readable writers I'd ever come across in my literary travels. 

I found myself in a hotel room, well a cabin by a lake with a Ex who'd be a fitting femme fatale antagonist. Earlier in the day, I had done what I usually do when I hit a strange town: find a used bookstore. This used bookstore wasn't actually very good. But there on the floor leveling a rack full of copies of "Twilight" was "The Erection Set." That might be hyperbole, but the dusty copy of the Mickey-stand-alone was the only thing I had to read in that cabin and femme fatales are finicky so I had time to kill. Man, I burned through that book, Dogeron Kelley and his problems that involved sexy-sex, guns, murder, and money were all I needed to be a life-long Mickey-fan, Mickey's-then wife naked on the cover didn't hurt either. I soon ran through the Mike Hammers and the rest (read "The Deep" and thank me, its underrated) and I even plowed through some of his Tiger Mann novels (I have one or two left for later consumption) who as enough like Hammer to work for me. 

CONFESSION TIME. I'm not too hot on Raymond Chandler. Or Ross MacDonald. Whoops. My bad. Sorry and all that. Marlowe's only seems to exist on the page to be a sad momma's boy/drunk man's ideal self-image and a bit of a whimp (how many times can he have his gun taken off him and still afford a new one) too boot. Lew Archer should have figured out the pattern to all of his cases real soon, cause surprise rich families suck. That may all seem harsh, but never fear! I do have complete collections of MacDonald and Chandler's work and every now and then feel romantic enough to crack one of their spines. I can absorbed the fine prose and long-winded prose just fine. Plus they've made damned fined films out of them. I digress. I bring them up cause they are two-parts of the "Holy Trinity" of mystery writers. The other? Hammett. I'm a Hammett man through and through, he never wrote a bad sentence and oozed reality. He was tough when he needed to be and sentimental with the perfect ratio. Now Mickey didn't deal in "real," Hammers (and the rest of his work) seems to exist in a wild world hard-boiled, comic strip and noir clichés working in perfect unison. Hammer is a man to have as a friend, I mean. If something happened to you at least the baddies would eat slugs from a .45 for their trouble. So, my personal "Holy Trinity" is Dashiell Hammett, Mickey Spillane and John D. MacDonald, cause you can't not love Travis McGee.

Like a lot of people I preferred the early stuff back when Hammer was a young WWII vet and his trigger finger was itchy as hell. "One Lonely Night" is Mickey and Mike at his pinnacle, followed closely "My Gun is Quick" and "Kiss Me Deadly." His later stuff is just as readable but the fire had died down a bit. I'm not saying you'll be disappointed but it's not where I'd start. As a old-friend "The Snake" or "Survival Zero" goes down easier. Still, you'll have to try to not be entertained with one of Mickey's books in your hands. 

All your real-life heroes die. As a writer, Mickey is one of my personal heroes. We probably wouldn't have seen eye-to-eye on everything but we would have hopefully enjoyed a beer together (maybe even a Miller Lite) and had a good time. Even if I never met Mickey, it feels like I knew him. There's too much Mickey in the books for you not to get some notion of the guy. When Max Allan Collins (another immensely readable author if there ever was one) a long-time fan and friend of Mickey took up the mantle to complete all the manuscripts, fragments, parts and pieces that Mickey left when he died, I was excited. Max is the only guy for the job. I bought them all, but they sat on the shelf. Maybe I was intimidated again. I read the stand-alone's and loved 'em, but the Hammer's were left unread. All your real-life heroes die, but your fictional ones only sometime do. 

I was at a crossroads again. Not shacked up in a cabin with a cut-rate femme fatale, but a nervous night-before a wife's surgery. It wasn't the first but like any husband worth his salt you get a case of nerves from planned injury to your spose. Spoiler, it turned out fine but I needed a old friend to keep me company in a waiting room. "Complex 90" seemed to leap into my hand. By howdy, some things a kismet. The book is a quasi-sequel to "The Girl Hunters," a novel I haven't read in ten years or more. Luckily my Blu-ray copy of the movie version was waiting in the wings which I watched in the middle of reading the book. Mickey Spillane IS Mike Hammer, Max encourages you to picture Mickey as Mike when you read the book in the preface. "The Girl Hunters" the movie is top-shelf Hammer-on-film too (it's free on Tubi right now too) so check it out. 

"Complex 90" is a rollicking action novel chock full of 60's flavor, i.e. Russian agent with stainless steel teeth who's boiling hot enough for you to forget he teeth look like the bumper of a Buick. Hammer is older and mellower, sure, but he does kill over 45 people over the course of the book. Jeez. Gotta slow down some time, I suppose. Velda is right there with him, backing him up like a .32 to a .45 and being one hell of a woman too boot. Pat Chamber, Art Rickerby and Hy Gardner pop up plus some new backup in the form of Korean War vet Des Casey. The baddies are obviously the Communists, out for blood and to save face for Hammer's whoomphing of them across Europe or maybe more. It's a Mickey book so the plot twisty and turns like a mountain road. Max seamlessly weaves in his own high-caliber work and practically wraps the whole thing up in a pitch-black noir bow. I haven't had this much fun with a book for a while. 

This book has probably sent me down a Mickey rabbit-hole. I've already starting picking up the Titan Mass Market reprints to replace my smattering of trade paperback and hardcovers for the Max/Mickey collaborations. Cause a Mike Hammer novel feels at home in a mass market paperback. 

Quick Shots: "The Broker's Wife (Quarry #2) By Max Allan Collins

Sorry for the long delay in posts. I've been doing more writing than reading here lately. For those not it in the know, I'm a very low-budget (multiple award-winning) filmmaker. I have to throw the award thing in because otherwise the only way anyone knows is to come into my house and see them collecting dust on the shelf. So, I've been writing short films, two features, tinkering on my second novel, rewriting and polishing material. Since my team and I are all fully vaccinated and can finally (somewhat) get out of the house and make shit. I only tell you all this as a some-what lame excuse for the lack of reviews. 

Anyway, Max Allan Collins has been a staple of my reading nearly since the beginning, at least my "adult reading." I'd imagine if he wrote children's novels I might have gravitated toward those too. It was his movie tie-ins that I first picked up (see the movie thing ties in here too) I'd always ben a movie freak and since the movies that they showed at school rarely showed gun-fights, fisticuffs or had curse words I turned to the tie-in world to carry my movies with me. I was a real weird middle-school kid with a copy of "In the Line of Fire" in my book-bag. These days that might have got me in trouble, who knows. Max's tie-ins for "U.S. Marshals," "The Mummy" and the like made me know his name.

But it was his own novels that made him a favorite of mine. 

For some reason though his Quarry novels had eluded me, so I have missed out on what is really might be his crown jewel. Right before I started the blog I fixed this by buying most of the novels and tearing through "The Broker." I loved the book and became an instant Quarry fan. I was already a Nolan, Mallory, Ms. Tree, and Nate Heller fan mind you. "The Broker's Wife" is the 2nd Quarry novel only if you go by publication date. The order of the books zig-zags around and the titles change for different editions. It's a bit of a maze to master so I just decided to play it like I was reading them as they came out. 

Quarry is a wise-ass 'Nam vet who returned home to find his wife cheating on him, after a little creativity with a car-jack the man who was screwing his wife is dead, Quarry gets away with and lands in the sights of The Broker. The Broker has a network of killers-for-hire and offers Quarry a job. Since killing is about the only thing he knows he accepts. Things go sideways in the first novel and the second finds him hiding out in a cabin waiting for some hitmen to come and try and take him out. They do and the narrative is off and running. Along the way Quarry tackles killers, dirty lawyers, the beautiful widow of The Broker and even uncovers an old family secret. Max has a really nice clean "meat and potatoes" writing style, uncluttered and unpretentious. He (at least with these books) wants to tell a clear, exciting story and he absolutely delivers. Quarry's voice is a affable one for a stone-killer, he's a guy you like to hear stories from but might not want to actually know. People who know Quarry usually end up dead it seems.

I'll be forever grateful for Hard Case Crime for giving Max the opportunity to continue the series and pile up books on my shelves. Max's books are the most exciting novels coming out of  HCC anymore.  Man, I didn't even mention his collaborations with Mickey Spillane which are just uniformly excellent. Plus I just picked up "Skim Deep" the first Nolan book in 33 years, which I'll be covering here soon I'm sure. Then I'm also going to have to pick up his new series about 60's spy John Sand, that hits all the right buttons for me. Then there's his Jack and Maggie Starr series that I need more off, plus his stand-alone "Midnight Haul." Wait, then I need to get the rest of his Elliot Ness books. Whoa. Can you tell I'm a fan?